Best Image Optimizer

What do you use and why you think it's the best overall

[akogo]

I have a site which contains over a thousand jpeg images which I would like to speed up without sacrificing too much quality. Before I go on my rampage, I'd like to know of any affordable programs that can do this optimization. What programs do you use and why do you like it?

[Macguru]

>>affordable programs

I think this rules out PhotoShop...

What platform are you using?

[korkus2000]

I have been using fireworks lately and find it has nice compression.

[sun818]

I like Thumbnailer (Windows) by SmallerAnimals. I use it because its cheap ($20). I like it because you can tweak as much as you like. Once you create a "profile" with your tweak settings, your batch processing is automated.

Found a setting today which lets you specify the maximum file size and/or minimum quality you are willing to put up with. That setting will help with your bandwidth and load times.

[Macguru]

Graphic converter does a nice batch job for free on Macs.

[akogo]

I'm using XP and I'm a cheapo.

[Alex_Gilman]

You can download and try MacroMedia Fireworks for free (one month trial). It's in my opinion the best software out there for image optimization

[topr8]

i'm a great fan of ulead smartsaver pro (for pc)

although i see it is $60

it works great for me and what i like is that it has a very good 2 pane optimiser where you can see very clearly the changes as you lower the jpeg quality or decrease the colors in a gif.

for me easier than fireworks or photoshop, but maybe because i'm more familiar with it... its like a great grafics optimiser for a non grafics person...

doubtless someone here will be able to recommend a free app that is just as good?

[copongcopong]

for me, fireworks optimizes images better and with smaller file size.

[pageoneresults]

I've tried quite a few programs with Fireworks always consistently producing superior results. In fact, last night, I had 140 images to size down. My graphics department had taken the original digital images which were at 1740x1740 300dpi .tifs and gave me 640x640 72dpi .jpgs.

I ran a batch processing routine and created a thumb, medium and large size for each of the 140 pics in about 15 minutes total. Very impressive piece of software and you have quite a bit of control over the routines.

And then I uploaded them to the clients website, opened up my FP editor and used the Photo Gallery plugin to create a page with thumbs that linked to the larger images so the client could preview the quality. All this in a period of 30 minutes or less.

[akogo]

Sounds most of you like "Fireworks" so far. Is there a XP compatible version and about how much does it cost? Where did you purchase it? 140 images within 30 minutes of various sizes sounds very productive and efficient to me!

[pageoneresults]

Current version is Fireworks MX. I'm still using the previous version 4.0. Retail appears to be around the $299.00 range. For $500.00 more you can get the entire Macromedia package which includes Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX and a few others that are instrumental in the design toolbox.

[akogo]

Thanks to all for your opinions. I got an old copy of Fireworks and I'm giving it a try. So far it's working out pretty good -- it seems to do a better job than the trial version of another program I was using.

[bobriggs]

I'd like to know of any affordable programs that can do this optimization...

I saw this post yesterday, and I didn't respond because I was sure someone else would give the same answer I did. Since it hasn't been mentioned yet...

IrfanView is freeware. Affordable as it gets. It can act in batch mode, you just have to know the command line parameters. Set it once to the compression level that you want, then run a batch on a whole directory. I can't vouch for how 'pretty' the results are, but you might want to try it first. I think it ranks as the most inexpensive of all mentioned so far.

P.S.
Set it as your default viewer for .jpg, .gif, etc files. No overhead like photoshop to just start up the software. Simple stuff like cropping, resizing - very easy. Even if you have some of the Pro stuff, I'd recommend it just as a simple cropper/resizer/viewer. It can co-reside with everything.

[Hoople]

I have been using it for years, gotta be the best freware program I've ever found. I have PhotoShop and PaintShop Pro but end up using IrfanView the most. It makes thumbnail pages too!

[akogo]

Thanks for the update on IrfanView. I'll try that too. I'm not partial to anything at the moment so why not?

[Alex_Gilman]

Hoople, but you have to agree that IrfanView is hardly a replacement for Photoshop.

Photoshop does it all and optimization is just one of the things it does (fairly well I should add).

I just wanted to clarify this in case there are people not very knowledgeable about graphics software reading this.

[crash]

Comparing an older photoshop's compression to an old fireworks compression and fireworks tends to win.

That said, for graphics it really depends on what you need to do, i use them both for their various strengths depending on what i'm doing.

[Alex_Gilman]

hi crash ;)

Like I said before ...I make all my grpahics in Photoshop save to TIFF and export in Fireworks. I get the best result that way.

[victor]

I don't know about the best, but it's free and online:

[hitboxcentral.com...]

Give it a page, navigate to the Summary Load Time page. It'll list the images. Click an imaage name to see it at different byte sizes.

[akogo]

Hello everyone! Almost two weeks later and finished optimizing all my images! Thanks to all for your opinions. Used Fireworks batch option! My site is almost no wait super fast... maybe more pageviews from visitors starting today.

[toadhall]

Glad you got the job done akogo.
I'm a little surprised no one mentioned JPG Cleaner ("...for cleaning JPG files from anything that is not picture data"). Amazing the amount of gunk it can get rid of. AFAIK it's still freeware.

[mivox]

I was playing with Graphic Converter (must have shareware for Mac) last night, and was amazed at the jpeg quality::size ratio. I ended up shelving Photoshop for the evening and compressing a group of 50+ photos with Graphic Converter instead.

[zeus]

This was interesting that could maybe make my page a little quicker, Ill try fireworks MX

zeus

P.s I did look through alot of pages with images and they all had sizes in bytes and mine are kb so I hope this works, before I used Photoshop but the pictures get bad after opti.

[internetbrothers]

for optimizing your images just go to websitegarage.com

i hope it will help

I did the same with my site

<snip>

[edited by: Woz at 8:28 am (utc) on Dec. 1, 2002]
[edit reason] TOS#13 [/edit]

[defanjos]

I love Ulead SmartSaver, it integrates right into Photoshop, so all you have to do is FILE > EXPORT > Ulead SmartSaver